Board Votes To Admit More Black Students At Elite San Francisco School

Only one Black young man was part of the freshman class at Lowell High School in California last year.

A California school board decided to combat racial disparities when it comes to student enrollment. San Francisco school board members voted unanimously for a policy change Tuesday (Oct. 9) that will allow for the admission of more Black students at Lowell High School, an academically elite public institution in the city.

The decision allows for qualified students from a predominately Black middle school in the city to have automatic admission into Lowell, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. As of now, the decision would affect an estimated 11 current eighth-grade students at Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School.

The high school has a disproportionate number of white and Asian students, with Black students nearly non-existent. Only one Black male student was among a class of 500 freshmen at Lowell last year, Mark Sanchez, a board member, said.

The S.F. school board has increased access to the academically elite Lowell High School by allowing all qualified applicants from a predominantly black middle school to automatically earn admission. https://t.co/3A4gxoxt2i

The board’s recent decision at Lowell, one of the top public high schools in the nation, could open the door for other schools to make stronger efforts to bolster the representation of students of color.

In the meantime, the San Francisco board may have to brace itself for more discussions about Lowell’s admission policy. The school has traditionally made admission decisions based on students’ grades and test scores — a method that has come under scrutiny as creating a barrier that keeps many otherwise deserving students from entry.

The school allows for several spots to be filled by qualified students from underrepresented schools, but that is a limited number.

The bigger concern, however, with the admission policy seems to be whether basing decisions on academic performance is illegal or not. Lowell’s use of grades and test scores to determine student selection could violate a California law prohibiting the consideration of such factors, district officials have said to The Chronicle. A selection process based on the sole consideration of academic performance could be seen as a biased process. Again, time will tell if the board will be forced to look more closely at the overall admission policy.

5. MeToo rally at Trump International Hotel

The MeToo movement has grown by leaps and bounds in the last year, starting a global surge of activism against sexual violence.
RELATED: MeToo Founder Wants To ‘Change The Narrative About The Movement’
As activists celebrate MeToo's anniversary this weekend, some of its biggest moments and victories are winning more attention.
Tarana Burke, the movement's founder and an activist from the New York City area, started MeToo a little more than a decade ago. Burke, inspired by a young girl's story of abuse at the hands of her mother's boyfriend, took action by helping communities where rape crisis centers and sexual assault workers were non-existent.
"It's not about a viral campaign for me. It’s about a movement," Burke said to CNN. "On one side, it's a bold declarative statement that 'I'm not ashamed' and 'I'm not alone.' On the other side, it's a statement from survivor to survivor that says 'I see you, I hear you, I understand you and I'm here for you or I get it.'"
The movement took off as an online campaign last year when actress Alyssa Milano and other women used the hashtag #MeToo to share stories of abuse. Survivors began giving their accounts after the New York Times' investigation into Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, whose decades of sexual assault allegations became public on Oct. 5 of last year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The New Yorker published a story about the women who called out Weinstein for assault last October as well.
Since then, MeToo supporters have protested other high-profile men, from Bill O'Reilly to Bill Cosby, who was recently convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to jail. Here are some of the pivotal protests and moments that mark the movement's success on its anniversary.